Grinning Man Read online

  Well, that was always the question, wasn't it? Nobody ever knew, really, what Alvin was thinking. When he talked, he pretty much told the truth, he wasn't much of a one for fooling folks. But he also knew how to keep his mouth shut so you didn't know what was in his head. Arthur Stuart knew, though. He might've been just a boy, though more like a near-man these days, height coming on him kind of quick, his hands and feet getting big even faster than his legs and arms was getting long, but Arthur Stuart was an expert, he was a bona fide certified scholar on one subject, and that was Alvin, journeyman blacksmith, itinerant all-purpose dowser and doodlebug, and secret maker of golden ploughs and reshaper of the universe. He knew Alvin had him a plan for putting a stop to this thievery without putting anybody in jail.

  Alvin picked his time. It was a morning getting on towards harvest time, when folks was clearing out a lot of last year's corn to make room for the new. So a lot of folks, from town and the nearby farms, was queued up to have their grain ground. And Rack Miller, he was downright exuberant in sharing that corn with the geese. But as he was handing the sack of corn flour to the customer, less about a quarter of its weight in goosefodder, Alvin scoops up a fine fat gosling and hands it to the customer right along with the grain.

  The customer and Rack just looks at him like he's crazy, but Alvin pretends not to notice Rack's consternation at all. It's the customer he talks to. 'Why, Rack Miller told me it was bothering him how much corn these geese've been getting, so this year he was giving out his goslings, one to each regular customer, as long as they last, to make up for it. I think that shows Rack to be a man of real honour, don't you?'

  Well, it showed something, but what could Rack say after that? He just grinned through clenched teeth and watched as Alvin gave away gosling after gosling, making the same explanation, so everybody, wide-eyed and happy as clams, gave profuse thanks to the provider of their Christmas feast about four months off. Them geese would be monsters by then, they were already so big and fat.

  Of course, Arthur Stuart noticed how, as soon as Rack saw how things was going, suddenly he started holding the sacks by the top, and taking smaller handfuls, so most of the time not a kernel fell to the ground. Why, that fellow had just learned himself a marvellous species of efficiency, returning corn to the customer diminished by nought but the true miller's tithe. It was plain enough that Rack Miller wasn't about to feed no corn to geese that somebody else was going to be feasting on that winter!

  And when the day's work ended, with every last gosling gone, and only two ganders and five layers left, Rack faced Alvin square on and said, 'I won't have no liar working for me.'

  'Liar?' asked Alvin.

  'Telling them fools I meant to give them goslings!'

  'Well, when I first said it, it wasn't true yet, but the minute you didn't raise your voice to argue with me, it became true, didn't it?' Alvin grinned, looking for all the world like Davy Crockett grinning him a bear.

  'Don't chop no logic with me,' said Rack. 'You know what you was doing.'

  'I sure do,' said Alvin. 'I was making your customers happy with you for the first time since you come here, and making an honest man out of you in the meantime.'

  'I already was an honest man,' said Rack. 'I never took but what I was entitled to, living in a godforsaken place like this.'

  'Begging your pardon, my friend, but God ain't forsaken this place, though now and then a soul around here might have forsaken Him.'

  'I'm done with your help,' said Rack icily. 'I think it's time for you to move on.'

  'But I haven't even looked at the machinery you use for weighing the corn wagons,' said Alvin. , Rack hadn't been in a hurry for Alvin to check them over - the heavy scales out front was only used at harvest time, when farmers brought in whatever corn they meant to sell. They'd roll the wagons on to the scales, and through a series of levers the scale would be balanced with much lighter weights. Then the wagon would be rolled back on empty and weighed, and the difference between the two weights was the weight of the corn. Later on the buyers would come, roll on their empty wagons and weigh them, then load them up and weigh them again. It was a clever bit of machinery, a scale like that, and it was only natural that Alvin wanted to get his hands on it.

  But Rack wasn't having none of it. 'My scales is my business, stranger,' he says to Alvin.

  'I've et at your table and slept in your house,' says Alvin. 'How am I a stranger?'

  'Man who gives away my geese, he's a stranger here for ever.'

  'Well, then, I'll be gone from here.' Still smiling, Alvin turned to his young ward. 'Let's be on our way, Arthur Stuart.'

  'No sir,' says Rack Miller. 'You owe me for thirty-six meals these last six days. I didn't notice this Black boy eating one whit less than you. So you owe me in service.'

  'I gave you due service,' says Alvin. 'You said yourself that your machinery was working smooth.'

  'You didn't do nought but what I could have done myself with an oilcan.'

  'But the fact is I did it, and you didn't, and that was worth our keep. The boy's worked, too, sweeping and fixing and cleaning and hefting.'

  'I want six days' labour out of your boy. Harvest is upon us, and I need an extra pair of hands and a sturdy back. I've seen he's a good worker and he'll do.'

  'Then take three days' service from me and the boy. I won't give away any more geese.'

  'I don't have any more geese to give, except the layers. Anyway I don't want no miller's son, I just want the boy's labour.'

  'Then we'll pay you in silver money.'

  'What good is silver money here? Ain't nothing to spend it on. Nearest city of any size is Carthage, across the Hio, and hardly anybody goes there.'

  'I don't use Arthur Stuart to discharge my debts. He's not my -'

  Well, long before those words got to Alvin's lips, Arthur Stuart knew what he was about to do - he was going to declare that Arthur wasn't his slave. And that would be about as foolish a thing as Alvin could do. So Arthur Stuart spoke right up before the words could get away. 'I'm happy to work off the debt,' he says. 'Except I don't think it's possible. In six days I'll eat eighteen more meals and then I'll owe another three days, and in those three days I'll eat nine meals and I'll owe a day and a half, and at that rate I reckon I'll never pay off that debt.'

  'Ah yes,' says Alvin. 'Zeno's paradox.'

  'And you told me there was never any practical use for that "bit of philosophical balderdash", as I recall you saying,' says Arthur Stuart. It was an argument from the days they both studied with Miss Larner, before she became Mrs Alvin Smith.

  'What the Sam Hill you boys talking about?' asked Rack Miller.

  Alvin tried to explain. 'Each day that Arthur Stuart works for you, he'll build up half again the debt that he pays off by his labour. So he only covers half the distance towards freedom. Half and half and half again, only he never quite gets to the goal.'

  'I don't get it,' says Rack. 'What's the joke?'

  By this point, though, Arthur Stuart had another idea in mind. Mad as Rack Miller was about the goslings, if he truly needed help at harvest time he'd keep Alvin on for it, unless there was some other reason for getting rid of him. There was something Rack Miller planned to do that he didn't want Alvin to see. What he didn't reckon on was that this half-Black 'servant' boy was every bit smart enough to figure it out himself. 'I'd like to stay and see how we solve the paradox,' says Arthur Stuart.

  Alvin looks at him real close. 'Arthur, I got to go see a man about a bear.'

  Well, that tore Arthur Stuart's resolve a bit. If Alvin was looking for Davy Crockett, to settle things, there might be scenes that Arthur wanted to see. At the same time, there was a mystery here at the millhouse, too, and with Alvin gone Arthur Stuart had a good chance at solving it all by himself. The one temptation was greater than the other. 'Good luck,' said Arthur Stuart. 'I'll miss you.'

  Alvin sighed. 'I don't plan to leave you here at the tender mercy of a man with a peculiar fondness for geese.'


  'What does that mean?' Rack said, growing more and more certain that they were making fun of him underneath all their talk.

  'Why, you call them your daughters and then cook them and eat them,' says Alvin. 'What woman would ever marry you? She wouldn't dare leave you alone with the children!'

  'Get out of my millhouse!' Rack bellowed.

  'Come on, Arthur Stuart/ said Alvin.

  'I want to stay,' Arthur Stuart insisted. 'It can't be no worse than the time you left me with that schoolmaster.' (Which is another story, not to be told right here.)

  Alvin looked at Arthur Stuart real steady. He was no Torch, like his wife. He couldn't look into Arthur's heartfire and see a blame thing. But somehow he saw something that let him make up his mind the way Arthur Stuart wanted him to. 'I'll go for now. I'll be back, though, in six days, and I'll have an accounting with you. You don't raise a hand or a stick against this boy, and you feed him and treat him proper.'

  'What do you think I am?' asked Rack.

  'A man who gets what he wants,' said Alvin.

  'I'm glad you recognize that about me,' said Rack.

  'Everybody knows that about you,' said Alvin. 'It's just that you aren't too good at picking what you ought to be wanting.' With another grin, Alvin tipped his hat and left Arthur Stuart.

  Well, Rack was as good as his word. He worked Arthur Stuart hard, getting ready for the harvest. A late summer rain delayed the corn in the field, but they put the time to good account, and Arthur was given plenty to eat and a good night's rest, though it was the millhouse loft he slept in now, and not the house; he had only been allowed inside as Alvin's personal servant, and with Alvin gone, there was no excuse for a half-Black boy sleeping in the house.

  What Arthur noticed was that all the customers were in good cheer when they came to the millhouse for whatever business they had, especially during the rain when there wasn't no field work to be done. The story of the goslings had spread far and wide, and folks pretty much believed that it really had been Rack's idea, and not Alvin's doing at all. So instead of being polite but distant, the way folks usually was with a miller, they gave him hail-fellow-well-met and he heard the kind of jokes and gossip that folks shared with their friends. It was a new experience for Rack, and Arthur Stuart could see that this change was one Rack Miller didn't mind.

  Then, the last day before Alvin was due to return, the harvest started up, and farmers from miles around began to bring in their corn wagons. They'd line up in the morning, and the first would pull his wagon on to the scale. The farmer would unhitch the horses and Rack would weigh the whole wagon. Then they'd hitch up the horses, pull the wagon to the dock, the waiting farmers would help unload the corn sacks - of course they helped, it meant they'd be home all the sooner themselves - and then back the wagon on to the scale and weigh it again, empty. Rack would figure the difference between the two weighings, and that difference was how many pounds of corn the farmer got credit for.

  Arthur Stuart went over the figures in his head, and Rack wasn't cheating them with his arithmetic. He looked carefully to see if Rack was doing something like standing on the scale when the empty wagon was being weighed, but no such thing.

  Then, in the dark of that night, he remembered something one of the farmers grumbled as they were backing an empty wagon on to the scale.

  'Why didn't he build this scale right at the loading dock, so we could unload the wagon and re-weigh it without having to move the durn thing?' Arthur Stuart didn't know the mechanism of it, but he thought back over the day and remembered that another time a farmer had asked if he could get his full wagon weighed while the previous farmer's wagon was being unloaded. Rack glared at the man. 'You want to do things your way, go build your own mill.'

  Yes sir, the only thing Rack cared about was that every wagon get two weighings, right in a row. And the same system would work just as well in reverse when the buyers came with their empty wagons to haul corn east for the big cities. Weigh the empty, load it, and weigh it again. When Alvin got back, Arthur Stuart would be ready with the mystery mostly solved.

  Meanwhile, Alvin was off in the woods, looking for Davy Crockett, that grinning man who was singlehandedly responsible for getting two separate guns pointed at Alvin's heart. But it wasn't vengeance that was on Alvin's mind. It was rescue.

  For he knew what he'd done to Davy and the bear, and kept track of their heartfires. He couldn't see into heartfires the way Margaret could, but he could see the heartfires themselves, and keep track of who was who. In fact, knowing that no gun could shoot him and no jail could hold him, Alvin had deliberately come to the town of Westville because he knew Davy Crockett had come through that town, the bear not far behind him, though Davy wouldn't know that, not at the time.

  He knew it now, though. What Alvin saw back in Rack's millhouse was that Davy and the bear had met again, and this time it might come out a little different. For Alvin had found the place deep in the particles of the body where knacks were given, and he had taken the bear's best knack and given as much to Davy, and Davy's best knack and given the same to the bear. They were evenly matched now, and Alvin figured he had some responsibility to see to it that nobody got hurt. After all, it was partly Alvin's fault that Davy didn't have a gun to defend himself. Mostly it was Davy's fault for pointing it at him, but Alvin hadn't had to wreck the gun the way he did, making the barrel blow apart.

  Running lightly through the woods, leaping a stream or two, and stopping to eat from a fine patch of wild strawberries on a riverbank, Alvin got to the place well before nightfall, so he had plenty of time to reconnoitre. There they were in the clearing, just as Alvin expected, Davy and the bear, not five feet apart, both of them a­grinning, staring each other down, neither one budging. That bear was all spiky, but he couldn't get past Davy's grin; and Davy matched the bear's single-minded tenacity, oblivious to pain, so even though his butt was already sore and he was about out of his mind with sleepiness, he didn't break his grin.

  just as the sun set, Alvin stepped out into the clearing behind the bear. 'Met your match, Davy?' he asked.

  Davy didn't have an ounce of attention to spare for chat. He just kept grinning.

  'I think this bear don't mean to be your winter coat this year,' said Alvin.

  Davy just grinned.

  'In fact,' said Alvin, 'I reckon the first one of you to fall asleep, that's who the loser is. And bears store up so much sleep in the winter, they just flat out don't need as much come summertime.'

  Grin.

  'So there you are barely keeping your eyelids up, and there's the bear just happy as can be, grinning at you out of sincere love and devotion.'

  Grin. With maybe a little more desperation around the eyes.

  'But here's the thing, Davy/ said Alvin. 'Bears is better than people, mostly. You got your bad bears, sometimes, and your good people, but on average, I'd trust a bear to do what he thinks is right before I'd trust a human. So now what you got to wonder is, what does that bear think will be the right thing to do with you, once he's grinned you down?'

  Grin grin grin.

  'Bears don't need no coats of human skin. They do need to pile on the fat for winter, but they don't generally eat meat for that. Lots of fish, but you ain't a swimmer and the bear knows that. Besides, that bear don't think of you as meat, or he wouldn't be grinning you. He thinks of you as a rival. He thinks of you as his equal. What will he do? Don't you kind of wonder? Don't you have some speck of curiosity that just wants to know the answer to that question?'

  The light was dimming now, so it was hard to see much more of either Davy or the bear than their white, white teeth. And their eyes.

  'You've already stayed up one whole night,' said Alvin. 'Can you do it again? I don't think so. I think pretty soon you're going to understand the mercy of bears.'

  Only now, in his last desperate moments before succumbing to sleep, did Davy dare to speak. 'Help me,' he said.

  'And how would I do that?' asked
Alvin.

  'Kill that bear.'

  Alvin walked up quietly behind the bear and gently rested his hand on the bear's shoulder. 'Why would I do that? This bear never pointed no gun at me.'

  'I'm a dead man,' Davy whispered. The grin faded from his face. He bowed his head, then toppled forward, curled up on the ground, and waited to be killed.

  But it didn't happen. The bear came up, nosed him, snuffled him all over, rolled him back and forth a little, all the time ignoring the little whimpering sounds Davy was making. Then the bear lay down beside the man, flung one arm over him, and dozed right off to sleep.

  Unbelieving, Davy lay there, terrified yet hopeful again. If he could just stay awake a little longer.

  Either the bear was a light sleeper in the summertime, or Davy made his move too soon, but no sooner did his hand slide towards the knife at his waist than the bear was wide awake, slapping more or less playfully at Davy's hand.

  'Time for sleep,' said Alvin. 'You've earned it, the bear's earned it, and come morning you'll find things look a lot better.'

  'What's going to happen to me?' asked Davy.

  'Don't you think that's kind of up to the bear?'

  'You're controlling him somehow,' said Davy. 'This is all your doing.'

  'He's controlling himself,' said Alvin, careful not to deny the second charge, seeing how it was true. 'And he's controlling you. Because that's what grinning is all about - deciding who is master. Well, that bear is master here, and I reckon tomorrow we'll find out what bears do with domesticated humans.'

  Davy started to murmur a prayer.

  The bear laid a heavy paw on Davy's mouth.

  'Prayers are done,' intoned Alvin. 'Gone the sun. Shadows creep. Go to sleep.'

  That's how it came about that when Alvin returned to Westville, he did it with two friends along - Davy Crockett and a big old grizzly bear. Oh, folks was alarmed when that bear come into town, and ran for their guns, but the bear just grinned at them and they didn't shoot. And when the bear gave Davy a little poke, why, he'd step forward and say a few words. 'My friend here doesn't have much command of the American language,' said Davy, 'but he'd just as soon you put that gun away and didn't go pointing it at him. Also, he'd be glad of a bowl of corn mush or a plate of corn bread, if you've got any to spare.'